The Bequest of Big Daddy de Jo-Ann Costa

The Bequest of Big Daddy

Jo-Ann Costa

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 31 mar 2013

Ratio Janson is the crusty patriarch with an infamous background, a hair-trigger temper reverently referred to as Big Daddy by his family clan. His feisty great-granddaughter Jo-Dee overhears shocking gossip at Big Daddy’s funeral and is determined to plumb his murky past, from Reconstruction to the present day.

From a vast turpentine industry to the ruins of a decaying plantation with its feudal order a memory, Jo-Dee explores the complex nature of family and self, only to make a startling discovery. Will she betray her great-grandfather and disgrace the family name, or will she preserve his shameful secret?
And on the ancient grounds of the family mansion destroyed in the Civil War, will Big Daddy’s spirit claim her even from the grave?

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"Many Southern families have their Big Daddy – the wayward rapscallion whose criminal activities pave the way for his descendants’ respectability. In vivid prose that is at turns satirical, tender, and horrific, Jo-Ann Costa paints a compelling portrait of one such man – Ratio Janson. She shows how his loveless childhood developed in him a desperation and ruthlessness that assured not only his immediate physical survival, but also his eventual transformation into a wealthy patriarch, a true Southern capofamiglia. Anyone who enjoys Southern fiction or picaresque novels will love this one!"
—Lisa Alther, Author of six novels and four New York Times bestsellers, among them Washed in the Blood.

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“Ms. Costa writes like she was born to the craft. Wonderful storytelling and memorable characters you won’t soon forget. Big Daddy is not just any character—he gets into your head and refuses to budge.”

—Hillel Black, editor of twenty New York Times bestsellers

“In the tradition of Patrick D. Smith’s treasured A Land Remembered, Jo-Ann Costa’s impressive debut novel is a grand story that spans generations, where dark secrets both divide and unite. With a literary writing style and a careful eye and ear for the telling details and voices of her people, Jo-Ann’s Bequest is part gothic, part adventure, part mystery and wholly satisfying. Move over Tennessee Williams, there is a new Big Daddy in town.”

—Claire Matturro, award-winning Author of Skinny-dipping, Wildcat Wine, Bone Valley and Sweetheart Deal.

“The Bequest of Big Daddy marks the arrival of a fresh new voice in Southern literature.”

—Will Allison, Author of What You Have Left and the New York Times bestseller Long Drive Home.

Notă biografică

Jo-Ann Costa studied her craft at the knees of her clannish Alabama kin, who are among the most accomplished at fabricating outlandish tales. Thus trained as a storyteller, Ms. Costa honed her compelling voice while serving in executive roles for a mega-corporation founded by the late Howard Hughes. While there, and with higher stakes, she invented tales of a different sort. Since then, Ms. Costa has once again deployed her trademark spin with her debut novel, The Bequest of Big Daddy.

Extras

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Job 15:7

JO-DEE: SUMMER OF 1953

As I understand it, Big Daddy was born that way, unable to help himself when he acted ugly and equally unable to recognize right from wrong. By the time I last saw Big Daddy, he had grown brittle-old. Back then, I was but a child, almost eight years old, barely able to sit still while my father held Big Daddy’s withered hand.

The colorful stories I’d heard about Big Daddy approached legion and yes, you could say, legendary, as these types of tales go. But in my young mind, it seemed the frail man could not really be Big Daddy, for Big Daddy had once been big, I thought, and as I remembered him, profane, which had not changed a whit. Oh yes, and he was mean--hornet mean--the kind of mean that leaves a stinger you can’t dig out.

At first, I meant to spare him this last label and not mention Big Daddy’s meanness--then I reconsidered. Knowing how Big Daddy tried all his life to scare the heck out of folks, his life story deserves to be told just as he was.

On that day, my mother didn’t come with my father and me to visit Big Daddy as she harbored a low opinion of my great-grandfather. She said she had his “number,” and I remember wondering if she intended to call him later. My mother had a number of sayings I didn’t understand.

“Big Daddy’s licentious!” Mama often said, leaving it at that, me puzzling over what licentious could possibly mean and afraid to ask, else get a bat on the back of my head, my mother’s favorite move.

Licentious or not, Big Daddy’s days, hours and minutes on this earth were numbered, of that I was certain. And despite my mother’s objections, my father meant he would drag me along to pay homage to the family Lothario (another confusing word my mother applied to Big Daddy).

Outside of our sprawling family, others addressed Big Daddy as “Mr. Janson.” He demanded that sort of respect. That is, all except for the Colored folks, who called him as a young boy, “Mr. Ratio,” short for Horatio, a name his mama thought dignified after a too brief study of Hamlet. This distinction aside, to the members of the biggest spread of kin you nearly ever saw, the name “Big Daddy” was all we knew, or “Yes and No Sir,” if we didn’t want to be struck with his silver-tipped cane with the naked lady emerging from its top.

I’ll never forget that day when we went to say our farewells, for it is burned into my memory like no other. Our family’s Big Daddy was feared and revered and I was not exempt from his effect. A dubious role model, he occupied this position of peculiar honor throughout his long life. The anticipation of seeing him again sent thrills through my skinny body, exactly like the moments before stepping onto a Tilt-a-Whirl.

“I want you to say good-bye to your great-grandfather,” my father said, “you’ll be looking at a legend, Jo-Dee. One final time, you can see with your own eyes what a legend looks like before he’s gone.” Daddy shook his head, snicking his tongue against his back teeth. “They don’t make ‘em like that old rooster anymore. Your ancient kin is one-of-a-kind.”

“Yessir,” I answered, both wanting and not wanting to tag along, the wanting winning, despite the big words my mother used to describe Big Daddy, which for all the world to me, sounded like my kin carried a dreaded disease. Nevertheless, giddy with anticipation, I followed Daddy to our car on a glare-studded summer morning in 1953.

Settled inside my father’s prized DeSoto, we drove out into the countryside, Daddy whistling like I wished I could whistle, windows rolled down, the warm air whipping through my hair, strands of it entering my open mouth when I shouted my admiration of Daddy’s talent through the blasts of whooshing air. A hundred wild hairs and a few miles later, we turned onto Aunt Beulah and Uncle Sibley’s dirt road.

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